Monday, November 26, 2012

What’s so magical about Maaza?

**A Story
from April 2012 which I had emailed and journaled about but never had the time to compile and share with you all... until now **

PART 1

It was love at first sip. I love
mangos and I love Maaza’s mango sumu (juice). I love it so much that whenever I
went to a larger, more developed village like Ingoré or São Domingos to buy
medicine, I always stopped by a store, which had an ice chest/chest freezer,
and treated myself to a frosty cold, or sometimes mildly chilled, Mango Maaza. Tanu,
one of the store keepers in our village, stocks Maaza but has no refrigeration.
Though undoubtedly more refreshing when chilled, even at room temperature of 80
or 90 degrees its delicious, and when I go to Tanu’s store and ask for “my
juice” he knows exactly what I want. Yes, it’s good juice, but would I blog about ordinary
juice? No.

Mango Maaza won’t reduce your appetite,
help you stay up all night, or get rid of wrinkles. It’s also not particularly
cheap, in the US or in Africa! So what IS
so magical about a cold Mango Maaza you might ask yourself? Well, ordinarily,
nothing. It’s juice. As I explained previously, it’s quite delicious juice,
especially with no Ocean Spray around, but there’s certainly nothing “magical”
about it, in and of itself. But as I’m sure you know, many ordinary things in
life are valuable due to their sentimental value. Mango Maaza is no exception.

~ *
~ * ~

It started out as an ordinary
afternoon. I was in the kitchen at the mission house trying to figure out what
I could come up for dinner, when my good friend Mariama appeared at the door
with her young son Mamanjan. I immediately began to apologize because I had
said I would stop over and was running late, but she interrupted me mid
sentence and said the doctor wanted to see me. Now this was startling in and of
itself, since Sean and I were the only medical professionals in the village.It was a Saturday afternoon and I
remembered that the people from Sedengal (a nearby village) had come to run
their monthly immunization clinic. I asked Mariama if that was the doctor who
wanted to see me. She said yes and, holding back tears, said that the doctor
(which is term often used to describe any medical personnel) there wanted to
see me. Sensing that something was wrong, I ushered her out the gait and we
headed for the benches in the shade of a large tree, where they run monthly
vaccine programs. By this time Mariama is blurting out something about him taking
her baby and I’m confused, thinking that though my Creole was far from perfect,
perhaps there was a huge misunderstanding between her and this “doctor” she was
speaking of. Mariama is a young Fula woman. Fulani women, at least in our area,
are normally uneducated and often don’t speak Creole well, or even at all. I
was at a loss for what could have possibly happened here but was hoping I would
be of some use sorting things out. As we are approaching, a medical
provider sees Mariama and starts verbally attacking her, roaring in a loud
demeaning tone of voice, calling her an unfit mother and saying that Fula
children always die because their mothers don’t take care of them. By now I’ve
heard enough and attempt to introduce myself, but he continues. He is now
addressing myself, insisting she’s lying to me and accusing her of not feeding her infant son, pointing out that he’d lost 0.2kg
(0.44lbs) since the prior month.By this
point, between his accusations, his tone of voice, and the fact that he has
unjustly accused and publically humiliated my friend, this man has rather rapidly
pushed my, actually I do know her. She’s one of my best friends. I am at her house multiple times a day,
and I know that she has done so much to try to help this poor child who
is always sick and she does extra side jobs so that they can buy him supplemental
formula and fortified baby food, so don’t you dare verbally attack her like
that …(pause to breathe), button.

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for
themselves, ensure justice for those being crushed.”-Prov 31:8